Just a bit OCD.

There’s too many labels in this world. Fact.

We have become so adept at diagnosing the fuck out of all of our quirks, tics and odd behaviors that it is possible to place anyone on some spectrum or other, no problem whatsoever.

These days…it has become almost impossible to be completely healthy, or normal, anymore. Whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.

We have become too smart for our own goods, I feel like. Live in a world where we have the knowledge to find any problem and work on a solution.

Yet, regardless of this capacity, we have kept the taboo around each and every one of these labels very much alive. We are normalising a diagnosis culture – but are subsequently keeping all of our diagnoses in the ‘dark and bad’ corner, unchanged. We’re improving the one, yet refusing to become more open to all of the things we discover at the same time. Moving forward on one level while stubbornly staying stuck in the Middle Ages on another.

Labels like mental disease or illness or disorder and the people carrying them are still stigmatised. Condemned. Disapproved. Judged and hated. Yet more and more people see them applied to them, willingly or not, with all of the consequences of being labeled. And that? That’s a bad thing, if you ask me.

We’re creating a world where we keep discovering more and more about all of the different ways people can tick and function – but we’re making that same world unsafe for ticking in a certain way by making every ‘odd’ way to tick a taboo. A bad thing Even though, these days, we’re pretty well aware of the fact that no one ticks the same.

I’ve always been very strongminded about how unnecessary this incessant labelling CAN be.

Obviously, I understand that there’s instances, cases, people whose worlds can be made infinitely better by finally having a word for what’s ailing them and access to the medicines to make life bearable. Or at least a possible solution for what’s making them miserable. I do.

But for every important diagnosis. For every person ‘saved’ from themselves – there’s also one who did not need that diagnosis. Who is marked by something that does not necessarily improve their life. Or who is labeled, without needing to be changed. Without WANTING to be changed.

Having a word for your behaviors and a label to match way too often becomes a shield. A reason to do things, or not to do things. An excuse to justify any and all acts that might not fit the mold without any intention or option for betterment. Which does not make a person, or the world around them, any better.

Those labels are out there. Free to use for any individual, while most of them have not the slightest clou about what the disorders they so jokingly throw around really entail.

Like this girl in Glee who just has a really horrible personality. Who speaks her mind too plainly, directly and honestly (and never has anything nice to say) only to follow up a blatant insult with ‘but I get to say that. I have Aspergers. Self diagnosed‘. Using and abusing a label that she could easily have done without. And has no ‘right’ to. Only to ensure that she can live her life in the way she pleases without any intent for ‘getting better’.

Or the people who cut ambition out of their lives because they have something or other. ‘I can’t do this, because I have….’ or ‘I will never succeed at…because I am…’. Who start blaming the world for being against them, without being willing to put up the same fight that others do, because they have their label to hide behind.

I am guilty of this disregard for labels myself too, quite often. I know this. And regardless of how insensitive I know it can be regarded, it’s something I’ve grown up with. Joking about labels. Something that is normalised in our current culture almost as much as our right of speech, the length of our toes and excessive sensitivity on all cancel-topics.

I contribute a lot of my behaviors to ‘my OCD’ without thinking twice. Throw in a quip about my Tourettes when I stub my toe and launch a tirade of swearwords into nothingness. Jokingly comment on needing a bit more Anorexia when the scales are not turning up in my favor and ‘innocently’ comment on my becoming severerely depressed when Netflix keeps removing all of my favorite movies.

I do these things, often without thinking twice. Because even though I wasn’t diagnosed with any of them, there’s the simple fact that I DO carry around some quirks that fit into these labels. Not enough for any of them to hold true, but I (like everyone else) can recognise parts of myself in each of these taboo areas. We all are a little bit of every label that we’ve invented. We all are a bit OCD. And a bit autistic. A bit of a problem-eater or drinker and a bit depressed.

But in most cases…I think we would’ve been better off just thinking that that’s just our particular brand of crazy. Without having a name for each little ‘weird’ part of our personality. Without being labeled for it. Blissfully unaware.

Plus. Honestly. If I have a discussion with a friend that plays Blockudoku and just RANDOMLY picks levels like in this picture instead of playing them in order as she damn well should…why am I suddenly the crazy OCD person, instead of her? Maniac.

Again. That was a joke. Highly inappropriate, I know. It’s because I’m –insert label-.

Or just really insensitive.